Bread Lines in the US

By Stephen Lendman

It happened in the US before. It’s happening again in various ways at a time when perhaps harder than ever hard times may be just beginning.

First some background and related thoughts. 

The Great Depression of the 1930s in the US followed prosperity marred by excesses in the 20s. The October 1929 stock market crash changed everything, ordinary people hit hardest.

Earlier goods times left out America’s underclass. Prosperity in the 1920s didn’t include most Blacks, other people of color, a new immigrant generation, poor southern sharecroppers and tenant farmers, nor many others in the US nationwide.

Throughout its history, America, Land of Opportunity has always been overshadowed by inequality between the haves and have-nots.

In 1962, Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” exposed the nation’s dark dark side enough for Jack Kennedy to ask White House Council of Economic Advisor chairman, Walter Heller, to do something about it.

Following JFK’s state sponsored assassination in November 1963, Lyndon Johnson (on January 8, 1964) “declared unconditional war on poverty in America.”

It fell way short of addressing the extent of the problem nationwide. Today, Washington’s bipartisan criminal class is going the other way — marginalizing the rights and wealth of ordinary people so privileged ones can be richer and more powerful.

Almost 60 years ago, Harrington said the following:
“In morality and in justice, every citizen should be committed to abolishing the other America, for it is intolerable that the richest nation in human history should allow such needless suffering.”

“But more than that, if we solve the problem of the other America we will have learned how to solve the problems of all of America.”

It didn’t happen in the 1960s. Today, things are on a slippery slope toward becoming a ruler/serf/totalitarian society that’s more intrusive, unsafe and unfit to live in than earlier — what only a grassroots national convulsion can have any chance to stop and shift things in a positive direction.

Change always comes bottom up, never top down. Privileged classes don’t change unless pushed hard.

....

....None of what’s unfolding should have happened. If the nation was run by government of, by, and for everyone equitably, Americans would be in good hands to deal effectively with whatever situations arise.

Sadly, polar opposite is true. COVID-19 isn’t the great crisis of our time, not by a long shot.

It’s government of, by, and for the super-rich and their cronies, by scheming self-serving politicians.

US governance is composed largely of white men who operate extrajudicially — who lie, connive, misinterpret and pretty much do things ad libitum in discharging their duties as they see fit for themselves and deep-pocketed funders.

It’s a nation of men, now laws, equity or justice. As unacceptable as things have been pre-COVID-19, they’re likely to get much worse ahead.

Full Article: [globalresearch.ca]